BookshelfMonstrosity: Though it is less witty than We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Never Let Me Go is another poignant and insightful story about biological experimentation and human identity. Both novels feature lyrical prose, well-developed characterization, and haunting tones of melancholy.… (more)

God, I absolutely relished in this read. Gives me the urge to watch the movie for the third time.

To people who are contemplating whether to buy/read this book, just an advice here: Don't go in expecting a clear-cut plot. Or, should I say, the existence of a plot, at all. Because there isn't one. It is simply a collection of memories; reminiscences. Although it is structured chronologically, it doesn't necessarily mean there is a clear beginning, climax and ending. I suggest you take your time while you read it. Maybe settle in to a comfortable armchair, have a nice cup of tea by your side. And don't forget to pay attention to the characters.

Also, this isn't sci-fi. At least not in the traditional sense. If you're a sci-fi geek and you have your hopes up... well then, you're definitely in for a dull ride ahead. ( )

Once I started reading this book I just had to keep on to find out exactly what was going on. It is written in first person from the point of view of Kathy H. She is reminiscing about her childhood in Hailsham and her friends and guardians and moves on to more recollections of her young life. I really felt she was telling me everything and nothing as the book is so cleverly and mysteriously written. It is a sad, surprising and compelling read. ( )

Fiction This is a horror story of the most civilized kind. On the surface, Never Let Me Go appears to be a story about a school. You are introduced to students and teachers as you become privy to the mechanics of this intimately enclosed society. The subject matter and time are futuristic without being technological. Mysteries, clues, and questions propel the story until locking in on what is looming over this microcosm; society has taken the potential of cloning to an obscenely organized level of dehumanization. The subject is compelling in and of itself, but Ishiguro's true stroke of genius is generated by the blanket of passivity and acceptance over it all. The horror lies not in the offense, but in the toleration of it. Is humanity beyond experiencing the outrage that could save us from ourselves? Very well written and detailed, you will think about this book a long time after you've turned the last page. And yes, fear. Recommended June 2006

Ishiguro is extremely good at recreating the special, oppressive atmosphere of school (and any other institution, for that matter)—the cliques that form, the covert rivalries, the obsessive concern with who sat next to whom, who was seen talking to whom, who is in favor at one moment and who is not.

"Never Let Me Go" is marred by a slapdash, explanatory ending that recalls the stilted, tie-up-all-the loose-ends conclusion of Hitchcock's "Psycho." The remainder of the book, however, is a Gothic tour de force that showcases the same gifts that made Mr. Ishiguro's 1989 novel, "The Remains of the Day," such a cogent performance.

This extraordinary and, in the end, rather frighteningly clever novel isn't about cloning, or being a clone, at all. It's about why we don't explode, why we don't just wake up one day and go sobbing and crying down the street, kicking everything to pieces out of the raw, infuriating, completely personal sense of our lives never having been what they could have been.

Wikipedia in English (2)

At the age of thirty-one, Kathy H. is coming to the end of her time as a carer – a milestone that prompts her to reflect on her unusual life. She begins, naturally, with her childhood at Hailsham, where she and her friends Ruth and Tommy negotiated the lessons and Exchanges set by their guardians, as well as the constant social pressures of school life. As her recollections progress, however, Kathy must take care not to delve too deeply into the tangled knot of her own emotions. The past holds no refuge for her; even since childhood, the knowledge of what the future holds has always been there, deep down – and some truths are too terrible to be confronted.

All children should believe they are special. But the students of Hailsham, an elite school in the English countryside, are so special that visitors shun them, and only by rumor and the occasional fleeting remark by a teacher do they discover their unconventional origins and strange destiny. Kazuo Ishiguro's sixth novel, Never Let Me Go, is a masterpiece of indirection. Like the students of Hailsham, readers are "told but not told" what is going on and should be allowed to discover the secrets of Hailsham and the truth about these children on their own.

Offsetting the bizarreness of these revelations is the placid, measured voice of the narrator, Kathy H., a 31-year-old Hailsham alumna who, at the close of the 1990s, is consciously ending one phase of her life and beginning another. She is in a reflective mood, and recounts not only her childhood memories, but her quest in adulthood to find out more about Hailsham and the idealistic women who ran it. Although often poignant, Kathy's matter-of-fact narration blunts the sharper emotional effects you might expect in a novel that deals with illness, self-sacrifice, and the severe restriction of personal freedoms. As in Ishiguro's best-known work, The Remains of the Day, only after closing the book do you absorb the magnitude of what his characters endure. --Regina Marler

Hailsham seems like a pleasant English boarding school, far from the influences of the city. Its students are well tended and supported, trained in art and literature, and become just the sort of people the world wants them to be. But, curiously, they are taught nothing of the outside world and are allowed little contact with it. Within the grounds of Hailsham, Kathy grows from schoolgirl to young woman, but it's only when she and her friends Ruth and Tommy leave the safe grounds of the school (as they always knew they would) that they realize the full truth of what Hailsham is.… (more)